The Ayatollah Begs to Differ
The Paradox of Modern Iran
PERSIAN CATSThe cat, a sinewy black creature with dirty white paws, darted from the alley and jumped across the joob, the narrow ditch by the curb, onto the sidewalk on Safi Alishah. It took one look at me, and then fled down the road toward the Sufi mosque. "That's the neighborhood laat!" exclaimed my friend Khosro, a longtime resident of the no-longer-chic downtown Tehran street. "He's the local tough, and he beats up all the other cats. Every time my mother's cat goes out he gets a thorough thrashing and comes back bruised and bloodied."
"Why?" I asked.
"He just beats the crap out of any cat he doesn't like, which is most cats, I guess."
"And no one does anything about it?" I asked naively.
"No. What's there to do? Every neighborhood has a laat."
***
Iranians are not known to keep indoor pets. Dogs are, of course, unclean in Islam, and as such are not welcome in most homes (although not a few Westernized upper-class Tehranis do keep dogs, but generally away from public view). Ca ...
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